PROVO — Jogging helped Steven Jones relieve the stress when the international storm over cold fusion threatened to overwhelm the promising, 39-year-old Brigham Young University physics professor in the spring of 1989.

Now Jones is 57 and has had to make a slight concession to age when he exercises to combat the tension created by a brewing tempest that culminated Thursday in BYU's decision to place him on paid leave.

The decision blindsided Jones, who has been involved in a self-described "9/11 truth movement" — a movement that gained momentum after Jones lent it his considerable academic credentials by publishing a paper supporting the theory that a government conspiracy orchestrated the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001.

Frustration tugged at Jones late last year when fellow BYU professors, embarrassed by his association with what they consider a conspiracy theory, took a remarkable step to distance themselves from him for suggesting the buildings fell because of set explosive charges and not as a result of the planes that struck two of the towers.

So, heavier and less athletic than he was 17 years ago, Jones no longer jogs. Instead, he leaves his office in the Eyring Science Center and walks the short distance to the stairwell in the neighboring building. Frustration begins to bleed away as he reaches the sixth floor, about halfway through his climb. "The stress goes down as I go up," Jones said.

The strain created by negative reaction to his tower research collapses under the exertion of climbing 11 stories in less than 3 minutes to the top of a BYU icon — the Kimball Tower.

Triple towers

In interviews conducted before BYU's decision to review his actions, Jones explained that he is disturbed by evidence he believes is ignored in the 10,000-page report on the towers released by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Most members of groups like Scholars for 9/11 Truth, which Jones co-founded, don't dispute that two planes crashed into the twin, 110-story towers nearly five years ago, but they do rely in large part on Jones to prove it is physically impossible for the planes to have caused the towers to collapse.

His demolition theory begins with the fact that no other steel-frame buildings have collapsed due to fire and his belief that the lower levels of the two towers struck by planes should have borne the weight of the collapse of the tops of the towers. After all, the buildings had 47 interconnected steel core columns. In fact, he maintains, the tops of the towers should have toppled over, leaving the rest of the buildings standing.